Samantha Bee
Samantha Bee tore into the new abortion law in Texas, the most restrictive in the nation, on Wednesday evening – a week after the supreme court, in a midnight 5-4 decision, refused to block the measure which bars abortion after six weeks, before many women know they’re pregnant. “The Texas law circumvents Roe v Wade and, as Justice Sonia Sotomayor noted in her dissent, is flagrantly unconstitutional,” the Full Frontal host said.
“While the supreme court’s anti-pussy posse claimed they were ‘declining to block’ the Texas law on procedural grounds,” Bee continued, “this was just the latest partisan abuse of the court’s shadow docket,” emergency decisions made hastily – in this case, with just three days of consideration – without oral arguments. The court’s majority decision in this case was unsigned, and just a paragraph long. “One paragraph, and unsigned? You fucking cowards,” Bee fumed. “If you’re taking away our reproductive rights, at least own that you’re gutless monsters.”
The measure bars public officials from enforcing the law, but encourages private citizens to sue anyone who assists a woman in receiving an abortion – doctors, clinic staff, Uber drivers – and promises to provide $10,000 in reward for a victorious case. “Although you know people are gonna be pissed when that money only comes in Jesus bucks,” Bee joked. “You can only use them at Hobby Lobby, and even then, they’re only good for pipe cleaners and long sticks.”
“But Texas lawmakers aren’t just doing this shit for funsies,” she added. “They’re strategically trying to prevent the law from being challenged,” as the measure dodges constitutionality challenges through the doctrine of “sovereign immunity,” which allows people to sue states only if they’re targeting an official who enforces a law. “God, can you imagine if any of these useless twats put as much creativity and time into helping the millions of American children who have no secure home or food?” Bee wondered.
“As soul-crushing as it is to see how worthless our supreme court has become, it’s hard not to want to walk right into our rapidly rising oceans and never return,” Bee concluded, pointing to organizations like the Lilith Fund, Texas Equal Access Fund, and the Afiya Center fighting back in Texas. “We need to fight this oppressive law and all the others that come after it, because no person should be forced to give birth.”
Seth Meyers
“These days, you don’t have to look very far for bad news,” said Seth Meyers on Wednesday’s Late Night. “Here in New York City, the destruction from Hurricane Ida was so bad, there were practically rivers flowing into people’s homes and cars floating in 5ft of water. The flooding was so bad the subway looked like a whitewater rapid.”
“It’s undeniable, as it has been for a long time, that climate change is intensifying,” he continued. “Much of the [western US] has been on fire this summer, wildfire has drifted all across the country and made the air toxic on the east coast, and New York City just had to declare its first ever flash flood emergency. It’s getting so bad that Pizza Rat has taken up water ballet.”
Meyers also touched on the Texas abortion law, upheld by the supreme court in a last-minute, midnight decision. “That’s right, they did it in the dead of the night, in a little more than a page, in the same way a rich kid half-asses a freshman English paper because he knows he can’t fail out,” Meyers said.
“They gutted a woman’s right to choose in Texas, and who knows where else next, despite never commanding majority support from the American people, and they don’t give a fuck because they’re there for life,” he continued. “I mean, if that’s how our government is going to work, then why not have a fucking monarchy? At least then we’d have more messy tabloid drama and a Netflix show called The Gavel where the men get played by actors who are way better looking than the actual royals.”
Stephen Colbert
“There’s a new [coronavirus] variant in town, and it’s called Mu,” said Stephen Colbert on Wednesday’s Late Show. The variant, found in 167 people in LA county, is named after the 12th letter of the Greek alphabet, “and not, as I thought, for the Pokemon Mu,” said Colbert. “Either way, gotta get vaccinated, or you’ll catch ’em all.”
Last week, the World Health Organization deemed Mu a “variant of interest”.
“OK, in the PR world, that’s what we call ‘buzz,’’ Colbert joked. “A ‘variant of interest’ is less dire than ‘variant of concern,’ which is how Delta is categorized. The rating system goes, ‘variant of interest,’ ‘variant of concern,’ ‘variant of pants-crapping’ sometimes called ‘code brown,’ and finally ‘variant of is there any more room on Jeff Bezos’s penis rocket to escape the planet?’”
The WHO said in a press release that the vaccines may not work against Mu, as the variant has properties to evade immune responses caused by a “constellation of mutations” – “a constellation also known as The Big Downer,” Colbert quipped.
“But there is some good-ish news out there,” he continued, as 75% of US adults have taken at least one dose of a Covid vaccine, “meaning this life-saving vaccine is just slightly more popular than me shaving off my mustache.”
